2011 News Releases

Astellas Pharma signs a license agreement with Evec for a fully-human antibody

September 5, 2011

Tokyo & Sapporo, Japan, September 5, 2011 – Evec, Inc. (”Evec”) and Astellas Pharma Inc. (Tokyo:4503, “Astellas”) today announced that they have entered into a license agreement for one of Evec’s fully-human antibodies against infectious diseases. Based on the agreement, Astellas will obtain worldwide exclusive development, manufacturing and commercialization rights for the program. In return, Evec expects to receive an upfront payment of 0.6 billion Japanese Yen upon signing the license agreement and milestone payments depending on development and sales phases from Astellas totaling up to 13 billion Japanese Yen, as well as royalty payments associated with potential product sales. The development stage of the program is pre-clinical.

Astellas is committed to becoming a global category leader by establishing a business model in urology, immunology including transplantation & infectious diseases, oncology, neuroscience, DM complications & metabolic diseases. The program would strengthen its pipeline of infectious diseases.

About Evec Evec is a biotech company located in Sapporo, Japan, established in 2003, based on proprietary technologies of professor Kenzo Takada at the Institute for Genetic Medicine of Hokkaido University. Evec is specialized in development of a wide spectrum of human monoclonal antibodies in multiple therapeutic areas, including cancer, inflammatory diseases and infectious diseases by an Epstein-Barr Virus Transformation Method.